Talk:LOST
Apollo Bar Ok so I've been reading about this Apollo chocolate bar that appears in Lost, and is also found in other tv series. Do fictional brands count as links between series? Well when it's Tarantino's Red Apple for example yes, because it's the same creator implying a connection between his movies; in the case of Morley cigarettes I said it doesn't because that's something that goes a very long way back, and people don't even know who invented it, so when a pack of those appear is usually just a recurring staple of cinema rather than a reference, like having phone numbers start with "555". Not to mention, the brand is not a trademark and whoever wants to make a packet of Morleys can (Wikipedia says that they are produced by The Earl Hays Press, but I'm pretty sure not all its appearances were by this company) The Apollo bar I think is different though. Apparently it was created specifically for Lost, and it had a prominent role in The Lost Experience, where actual real chocolate bars got made, and they had a fictional site about the brand. So I thought it would have been a trademark of the show's creators, but I couldn't find any notice on the fictional site (based on the few surviving screenshots and clips; the site is currently down) nor on the bar itself... So I was reading this page and not only it lists various appearances of the bar, it also states that the bar is produced by the Independent Studio Services (ISS) props, and it can show up in any production without ABC's permission... Which made me think that the "Apollo" brand is trademark of ISS, and its official appearances are only those where the prop is made by ISS... but then there's this page which is an auction for props from Once Upon a Time, and it says that they were produced by Hopewell Works in Vancouver, so I believe at the end of the day it's basically the same thing as Morleys, anybody could make the prop and put it in their movie or show. Still you'll notice that its most prominent appearances are in ABC shows, and even that auction mentions that the Apollo bar is an allusion to Lost... SO my final thought on the matter is that while the bar may be free for everybody to use, it was made specifically for Lost, so even if it's not a trademark, a prominent appearance in another ABC show can indeed be seen as the creators implying a connection between the two shows' universes and it can count as a type 1 link; appearances in a show that's not ABC nor made by any producer can be considered a minor reference if the bar is written into the script or the camera focuses on it: that case can be implied as the creators of the show paying homage to Lost while not being authorized to create an in-universe connection; background appearances (like in a vending machine in Scrubs) can indeed just be considered the creators of the show supplying from ISS, in which case it's just an Incidental reference and it doesn't count as a fictional link at all. I'll add these connections soon, so if anybody has anything to say let me know.--Kombatgod (talk) 14:33, April 13, 2019 (UTC) :PS: I'm aware that the show featured other fictional brands, but for now I focused on Apollo. I think for Oceanic Airlines we can do a similar thing when it comes to subsequent appearances using the logo created specifically for LOST, while the name of the company is previous and very old... but I'd have to do some more research. --Kombatgod (talk) 14:41, April 13, 2019 (UTC) Oceanic Airlines Ok I might as well do this too. Wikipedia implies that the Oceanic Airlines logo used in LOST was made for the show. So I checked and according to this interview with LOST co-creator Damon Lindelof, they made up the name, and only later discovered it was used previously! This makes things easier, because it means that all previous appearances of an "Oceanic Airlines" has nothing to do with LOST: the one in this show is not a reference to those. Subsequent appearances only count as references to LOST if they feature the LOST logo (or anything specific like the flight number from LOST). Once again, if the reference is in an ABC show then it can be considered type 1.--Kombatgod (talk) 16:41, April 13, 2019 (UTC)